A ‘Plan’ Comes Together

Arts Live brings ‘worst movie ever’ back to life

Olivia Carter, from left, Olivia Moore and EJ Odbeide star in the Arts Live Theatre production of “Plan 9 From Outer Space.”
Olivia Carter, from left, Olivia Moore and EJ Odbeide star in the Arts Live Theatre production of “Plan 9 From Outer Space.”

“They come from the bowels of hell, a transformed race of walking dead, zombies guided by a master plan for complete domination of the earth.”

  • “Plan 9 from Outer Space”Written and directed by Ed Wood, “Plan 9 From Outer Space” won no Oscars and packed no theaters when it was released in 1957.

It wasn’t until the film - starring Bela Lugosi, Vampira and Tor Johnson - was declared “the worst movie ever made” in 1980 that “Plan 9” became a cult favorite.

The plot - such as it was - centered around a species of extraterrestrials trying to keep humans from creating a doomsday weapon. As part of their plan - “Plan 9” - they raise human dead - called “ghouls” in the movie - to do their bidding. “The earth people who can think are so frightened by those who cannot - the dead” is one of the film’s classically bad lines.

“It’s been one of my favorite horrible movies for a long time,” says Mark Landon Smith, playwright and executive director of Arts Live Theatre. “I was really surprised to learn it’s in the public domain.”

That meant Smith was free to adapt the film for his students, as he did “Night of the Living Dead” (1968) and “Teenagers From Outer Space” (1959) the past two Halloween seasons.

That was the easy part.

The hard part, says director Mike Thomas, is explaining to kids that something really bad can be really good - “and by making it worse, you make it better.”

“What we preached andtalked about as a cast is sincerity,” says Thomas, a veteran actor and playwright himself. “These characters believe they are doing a great job, and you have to believe that, too. If you start elbowing in the ribs for the joke, it’snot funny.

“They seem to get it, for the most part,” Thomas adds.

“Once in a while we had to go all-out funny, and then tone it down and be real with it. It’s all in the delivery and timing - and it’s hard to teach kids timing.”

“Even playing it straight, there are melodramatic moments, but they have to be played dead seriously by the actors,” agrees Smith.

For example, he says, when a character runs screaming through the graveyard, shescreams the entire time, nonstop.

“So it’s a funny kind of scream, not a terror scream,” he says. “She’s screaming through the cemetery not realizing she’s screaming too much.”

The play is filled with originally bad lines, like “Forget about the flying saucers. They’re up there.

But there’s something in that cemetery, and that’s too close for comfort.” But Smith also added some anachronisms referring to pop favorites likeJustin Bieber and Miley Cyrus and renamed some characters, like Col. Sanders.

“It kind of confuses kids, but eventually they figure out why it’s relevant and funny at the same time,” he says.

Thomas says working with the Arts Live students has in some ways “felt like being in an old one-room schoolhouse.” The cast of 21 youngsters ranges in age from 8 to 16, and Thomas says the older ones have helped the younger ones get a lot done in a short time.

“There are several moments I still crack up at even after four weeks of rehearsal and as tired as I am,” Thomas says.

“These kids do have a little bit more of a professional edge, and they’ve very earnest and honest, no matter what they do.”

Whats Up, Pages 16 on 10/26/2012

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